1 ©Eskerhazy Publications, 2014

Just Farmers: an informal agricultural newsletterVol. 2, No. 18 October 1, 2015

Foundation: We are stewards, not owners, of the land we farm. We are accountable for the way our land use affects the environment which includes land, water, air, plants, animals, and human beings.

News and Views: Correction: In our last issue we credited

Jeanne Millar with someone else’s

quotation and didn’t identify her as the

one with the original query. Our

apologies to Jeanne and others who may

have been separated from their original

words. If you wish to initiate a lawsuit

over this, please identify me by my real

name, Donald Trump, and not my nom

de plume, Curt Gesch. You’ll get more

money that way. September and October are busy months

for conferences as well as for harvest.

The B.V. Cattlemen’s Association field

day is October 3; the Soil Care field day

will likely be October 15 (it will be

advertised elsewhere); the poultry and

small animal sale occurred already in

September. With so much going on, we

decided that this would be a shorter issue

of Just Farmers, containing mostly

serendipitous items concerning farming,

crops, gardening, water, and so on. Addition: We ran out of space in the last

issue to explain more about plants

experiencing calcium deficiency (which

may contribute to—among other

things—blossom-end rot). Gypsum is

calcium sulfate; you get the calcium and

sulfate with minimal changes in pH. If

your pH is too low, all the calcium in the

world won’t do your plants much good:

that’s why liming (which raises the pH)

does good: the carbonate, especially in

CaC03 raises the pH and enables the

plants to use soil calcium. If you don’t

want to look like the Pillsbury Dough-

Boy from spreading lime, you can

purchase prilled lime. Isn’t prilled a

wonderful word? It means pelletized,

more or less, but saying prilled

impresses your friends.)

News from the Russian cattle industry:

“Russian meat giant Miratorg will put

an additional RUB1.4bn (US$47m) of

government subsidies towards a

project to produce high-quality beef in

the country’s Bryansk Oblast region.”

“Miratorg expands investment in its

latest beef project By Vladislav

Vorotnikov, 01-Aug-2014. In case you

were wondering, the Aberdeen Angus

herd will number 110,000 animals. The

“farm” in total has about 247,000 cows.

Ed. Note: As I drive around, I notice some herds of beef cattle that look sleek and fed: they have the look of animals that are cared for. I cannot imagine that operations such as the one described above could provide animal care.

According to Bill Zeedyk and Val

Clothier, two of North America’s

experts on stream care, each stream

(perennial or not) needs a healthy

riparian zone (vegetated shorelines).

Here’s how to figure out where to

fence: “As a rule of thumb, the

vegetation zone of each side of the

channel should be at least as wide as

the bankfull width of the channel.”

That means that if I have a creek

running through my pasture and the

“top of the bank” is 25 feet across,

my fences should be 25 feet away

from the edge of the creek on both

side. You can see how this is done

as you ride past Rick and Verna

Boonstra’s (and Jesse’s) farm in

Quick on Highway 16.

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Source: Let the Water Do the

Work: Induced Meandering, and

Evolving Method for Restoring

Incised Channels (Chelsea Green

Publishing).

The National Farmers Union has this

to say about recent international

trade talks:

“(Sept. 30, 2015) - In spite of Trade

Minister Fast’s denial of media

reports that he has offered ten

percent of Canada’s milk supply to

the United States during this week’s

Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)

negotiations, the National Farmers

Union (NFU) remains concerned.

During Canada-EU Comprehensive

Economic and Trade Agreement

(CETA) negotiations the federal

government made public promises to

protect our supply management

system, while behind closed doors it

gave the European Union an

additional five percent of our high-

end cheese market. Canadian dairy

farmers and processors will lose a

total of nine percent of our cheese

market to Europe if CETA is

ratified.” Source:

http://www.nfu.ca/story/tpp-could-

be-last-straw-dairy-sector-says-nfu

The following illustration and set of

directions could be called, “And you

think portable chicken tractors are

something new?” This information

came out in 1910, by the way. One of the annoyances about an ordinary chicken coop is that it is not easily moved from place to place, nor provided with a yard. To obtain a yard the coop must be moved separately, and thus require the loss of more or less time. In the drawing shown herewith is a simple, homemade coop, which can very easily be

moved by the aid of the handles at the apex at each end. The coop is built of ordinary material on a base frame, and with a V-shaped roof and side frames. The ridge pole is extended, as shown at each end, to form a handle. A convenient length is about 2 feet for the coop and 3 or 4 feet for the yard. If desired, the hen may be allowed the freedom of the yard or may be held in by slats, as shown in the drawing.

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/dev

ice/devices4.html

We noticed that in Vanderhoof

farmers are having a workshop that

will include information about using

forage kale. Farmers in Britain and

the European mainland have been

growing forage kale for hundreds of

years. I remember reading a book by

David Creaton (set in the 1950’s)

that contained anecdotes about

growing forage kale in the U.K. I

thought, “That’s what the Dutch call

bore kohl and eat with potatoes,

sausage, and gravy? Is it a cow food,

too?” How ignorant I was. How

foolishly we ignore the wisdom of

our predecessors!

In the next issue of Just Farmers,

we’ll report a little on the BV

Cattlemen’s Field Day held on

October 3 at Round Lake Hall.

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Gallery: Visual “odes to autumn”

1. Learning to appreciate old skills. Betsey Gesch scythes buckwheat straw (no seeds

because of early frost) for use as mulch. She rakes into windrows with a homemade wooden hay rake. We used dowels for the teeth but the best teeth are carved with a square butt end. That’s right: put a square end into the round hole and it will be tighter. The scything photos are dedicated to Paul Glover, Steffen Mayer, and Walter Bucher and anyone else who scythes.

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1. Cattle in Quick: Some of the Oosterhoff’s cattle in a very rural scene, across the road from a

country church (St. John the Divine) on a Sunday afternoon.

I got Holstein in my blood, but something from Saskatchewan, too.

Ruminating as the sermon goes on.

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

Gerard Manley Hopkins